A user gives telephony contact information to other people so that the user may receive calls. Typically, a single piece of contact information (such as a telephone number) is provided by the user to a wide range of people and businesses, including friends, family, business contacts, employers, charitable organizations, and service providers such as credit card companies. The contact information may also be provided when completing forms for joining organizations and sports teams, for entering draws, for requesting consumer information, for subscribing to magazines, or for registering with an Internet organization. The contact information can also be passed to third parties unbeknownst to the user.
The vast number of people and organizations which can have access to the user's contact information can prove burdensome to the user, particularly with respect to telemarketing. Even when the caller is legitimate, the user has little way of knowing who is calling before answering the telephone. Whether a call is from a family member, a particular group of friends, another group of friends, from an employer, or from a potential client, the user must treat all such calls in the same manner until the user takes the call and the caller identifies himself or herself. The problem is compounded when the contact information is shared among several people, as in a family sharing a telephone line.
Systems for providing Caller Identification (Caller ID) can assist in identifying callers and screening unwanted callers, for example by allowing the user to identify the calling number as that of a particular friend. However, Caller IDs are limited in that they are tied to the calling device and not to the calling party. This results in a degree of caller anonymity on the part of the caller. The user can choose to block calls from unrecognized numbers, or to block calls from specified numbers, but in either case the problem of managing the call is based on the identification of the calling device. If calls from unrecognized numbers are blocked, a friend calling from someone else's phone or a public phone will be unable to reach the user. If calls from specified numbers are blocked, unwanted callers will reach the user when calling from devices not previously recognized by the user. In either case, the call is treated based on the device from which the call originates, and not based on who is actually making the call. Furthermore, Caller ID can be disabled by the calling party by using an anonymity service. And even if a caller is correctly identified using Caller ID, management of the call is limited to either blocking or allowing the call.
A user may wish to manage calls in other ways other than just blocking or allowing a call. For example, the user may wish to forward calls from certain callers to voicemail with a particular announcement, personally answer the call in a business like manner (e.g. “ABC Services, Peter speaking”), block calls from certain callers and play a specific message, or forward calls from certain users to another terminal.
Bell Teen Services™ allows up to four telephone numbers per residential line, with a distinctive ring for each number. This allows, for example, parents of a household to distribute one telephone number to their friends and contacts and a child to distribute a different telephone number to his or her friends. In this way, when the telephone rings it will be clear whether the caller is one of the child's friends or one of the parents' friends or contacts. However, the number of different telephone numbers is limited, and the numbers can only be chosen when setting up the service. Withdrawing the number is a slow process which cannot be performed solely by the user without the involvement of the service provider. Furthermore, the user's telephone treats each called number differently simply by presenting a different ring pattern.
A system which allowed a user to configure any number of personalized aliases at any time would allow the user to dynamically customize means by which he or she could be contacted, providing greater control by the user over his or her privacy. Use of temporary aliases would allow the user to distribute contact information of limited duration.